Personal utility vehicles, in particular “pick-up” type trucks, have experienced an ever growing popularity due to the number of diverse tasks such vehicles can accomplish. Pick-up type trucks are favored by both limited-application residential users and commercial services for the ability to employ the truck-bed of this type of truck as a means for transporting large, heavy, and/or fouled materials. Such materials can be quickly and repeatedly transported without the need for exorbinant consumption of time required to cleanse the truck-bed after use.
Repeated use of pick-up type truck to transport large, heavy, or fouled materials tends to induce excessive wear of the truck-bed. The wearing of the truck-bed has deleterious effects in terms of both aesthetic qualities as well as the continued performance of the truck-bed. Scratches and dents tend to wear the paint away from the truck-bed, which detracts away from the appearance of cleanliness. More significantly, removal or loss of the paint of the truck-bed results in increased opportunity for oxidation and rusting of the metallic substrate there beneath. If the oxidation and rusting of the metallic substrate is allowed to continue, the metallic substrate will degrade and eventually fail.
To remedy the wear induced in the truck-bed, various constructs have been employed which fit in, and conform to, the profile of the truck bed, and are referred to as “truck-bed liners”. Typically, truck-bed liners are formed from a durable plastic substrate, which is thermoformed or cast in the shape and profile for a specific truck-bed, as represented by U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,735,565, 5,769,479, 5,904,390, and 6,017,057, all incorporated herein by reference. Application of the truck-bed liner into the truck-bed thus allows for a “sacrificial” surface, which is intended to receive the wear of use.
However, it has been found that the use of a truck-bed liner does not obviate the problem of wear of the truck-bed surface. Due to the need to fit the truck-bed liner, a certain amount of undermolding, or slack, is incorporated into the shape of the truck-bed liner. This slack, compounded by vibrations induced in movement of the truck-bed, results in the truck-bed liner rubbing against the painted surface of the truck-bed. Over time, and with continued abrasion, oxidation and rusting of the metallic substrate of the truck-bed begins to occur. As the truck-bed liner obscures and/or prevents the ready recognition of this destruction of the truck-bed itself, the extent of damage is not obvious until critical failure occurs.
Other kinds of truck-bed liners are practiced wherein a polymeric material is sprayed or painted directly into the truck-bed. While such directly applied liners remove much of the problem of the wear induced by a truck-bed liner, the use of a directly applied liner is essentially permanent, which can pose an issue if a different liner is required or the vehicle is leased.
The present invention provides an improved form of abrasion protective layer for automotive surfaces, which is particularly suited for use between a truck-bed and an inserted truck-bed liner.